"Miss Bruce," he exclaimed--"Maud--is it you?"
Turning his own body, so as to take advantage of a dim ray from the nearest gaslight, he was aware that the woman, shorter and stouter than Miss Bruce, had muffled herself in a cloak, and was closely veiled.
"You have a letter--a message," he continued in a whisper. "It's all right. I'm the party you expected to meet--here--at eight--under the trees."
"And wot the--are you at with my missus under the trees?" growled a brutal voice over his shoulder, while Tom felt he was helplessly pinioned by a pair of strong arms from behind, that crushed and bruised him like iron. Ere he could twist his hands free to show fight, which he meant to do pretty fiercely, he found himself baffled, blinded, suffocated, by a handkerchief thrust into his face, while a strong, pungent, yet not altogether unpleasant flavour of ether filled eyes, mouth, and nostrils, till it permeated to his very lungs. Then with every pulsation of the blood Big Ben seemed to be striking inside his brain till something gave way with a great whizz! like the mainspring of a watch, and Tom Ryfe was perfectly quiet and comfortable henceforth.
Five minutes afterwards a belated bricklayer lounging home with his mate observed two persons, man and woman, supporting between them a limp helpless figure, obviously incapable of sense or motion. Said the bricklayer, "That's a stiff-'un, Bill, to all appearance."
"Stiff-'un be d----d!" retorted Bill; "he's only jolly drunk. I wish I was too!"
The bricklayer seemed a man of reflection; for half-a-mile or so he held his peace, then, with a backward nod of the head, to indicate his meaning, observed solemnly--
"I wouldn't take that chap's head-ache when he comes to, no, not to be as jolly drunk as he is this minnit--I wouldn't!"